00:00The Cannes Film Festival starts this week, so we're taking this opportunity to look back at some of the best Palme d'Or winners of the last 25 years.
00:08Joining me now is my colleague David Morriconde, our specialist in film and many, many, many other things.
00:15David, if you had to put your money on it, what would you be choosing?
00:19What should we be looking back at? What for you have been the best Palme d'Or winners of the 21st century?
00:25Well, I did the top five because it's not easy to kind of limit it.
00:31And yeah, there have been some absolutely fantastic films that have won the Palme d'Or.
00:36And, you know, it just goes to show quite to what extent this festival really does make its mark on cinematic culture and has done over the past 25 years.
00:46So in at number five, I think it's Juliette de Corneuse Titan, which won the Palme d'Or.
00:54She became the first woman to ever win solo for the Palme d'Or because Jane Campion won in 1993, but with somebody else.
01:03And yeah, to my mind, it's one of the most uncompromising, surprising, unpredictable films to ever win the Palme d'Or.
01:11For those who haven't seen it, it tells this story, this modern metamorphosis story through the codes of body horror of this model who has a sexual fixation on automobiles and who goes on a killing spree.
01:27And essentially, many people tend to kind of, you know, just look away and shy away from this film because it is violent.
01:37It is incredibly intense.
01:39It pulls absolutely no punches.
01:41But it is a film that is really big hearted at its core and is rather surprising in how optimistic it is towards the end,
01:50specifically because it is about metamorphosis, as I said, but also acceptance and about the birth of a new world,
01:57a stronger world in which nonconformity is accepted, embraced and loved in an unconditional way.
02:07And it is, for me, just one of the best Palme d'Or winners in the last 25 years.
02:13So what makes number four on your list?
02:14Number four, I was hesitating between Kore-ed as the shoplifters and Bong Joon-ho's Parasite.
02:22And it kind of had to go to Bong Joon-ho just purely because of the success story that Parasite has had after the Palme d'Or win.
02:31It became the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or and the first non-English language film to win the Best Picture Oscar.
02:40And, you know, in telling this story of these very talented grifters, this family of grifters that infiltrate a richer family,
02:48Bong Joon-ho very satirically just creates this excoriating kind of criticism missile against not only entrenched social strata,
03:01but the dehumanizing effect of South Korea's cultural levels.
03:07And it's an incredibly powerful film.
03:10It's also a film that's quite unclassifiable because it's satirical, it's absurd, it's funny, it's Hitchcockian at points in its suspense.
03:19And I think also its lasting legacy is the fact that Bong Joon-ho, when accepting, I think it was the Golden Globe that year,
03:27made this incredibly powerful speech because many people are turned off by films with subtitles, by foreign films, quote-unquote.
03:38And here he made this fantastic speech saying, you know,
03:41once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you'll be introduced to so many more amazing films.
03:47And no truer word has ever been spoken.
03:49And I think that is its lasting legacy.
03:52Indeed. And what I particularly loved about it was I could watch it with all the family,
03:56and they wanted to watch it again and again and again.
03:58Well, great.
04:00And it's only number four on the list.
04:01So while that's getting closer to the top, what's your number three?
04:04My number three is The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke, who won in, I think, 2009 for this one.
04:13And, I mean, he won later on, actually, for the film Amour, which is a devastating film.
04:20But I think this one, in terms of scale and scope, is his masterpiece.
04:25It's this black and white gem that is set in 1913 in a small rural Protestant village in Germany,
04:35where this baron, this doctor, and this judge essentially rule this community with an iron fist.
04:45But this is a community that's plagued with these mysterious occurrences,
04:49these strange happenings, and the children of the village are blamed for them.
04:55And essentially what Haneke does, and I think rather brilliantly, is explore the root of evil
05:00and shows that when human beings deal with absolutes, whether they're religious or political,
05:10it just brings out the worst in humanity.
05:12And as a parable for the rise of Nazism, I think the White Ribbon works very, very well.
05:20But more than that, it's just this very cryptic, very sinister little riddle
05:25that offers absolutely no answers, and it's stronger for it.
05:29And, yeah, it's very much one of my favourites to ever win a Palme d'Or.
05:34OK, so getting even closer to the top now, what could be that? What's number two?
05:38Number two, number two, this one's a really tough one to recommend.
05:42It's called Uncle Bunme, who can recall his past lives.
05:46And the thing is, it's from this Thai director, Apichapon, Véracellakul.
05:51And essentially it's this very challenging, very avant-garde execution of a very simple story.
05:59At its core, it's a man who's dying, who is visited by the ghosts of his loved ones.
06:04And it just induces this dreamlike state.
06:09It's hyper-realist. It's surrealist.
06:13It makes sense without making any, but it is an incredibly sensual film.
06:18It's not an easy one to recommend because of its languid pace, and it is out there.
06:23But at the same time, there's an incredibly original and incredibly moving story of making peace
06:30with not only the material world, but the spiritual world.
06:34It is one of those films that has really stuck with me.
06:37So that's my number two pick.
06:38Where we go to move is to be moved, to feel something.
06:41And that sounds like the perfect description.
06:43If you want to have something completely different happen to you over two hours or more,
06:48what could be better than that, in your opinion?
06:50In my mind, the best film to ever win the Palme d'Or of the last 25 years is Elephant by Gus Van Saint.
06:58This came out in 2003, and yeah, it's based on the Columbine high school massacre.
07:06And what Gus Van Saint does with this film, he films it almost like a documentary,
07:13very minimal dialogue, these long tracking shots where the camera just glides.
07:18And it gives this poetry to every frame, but at the same time, this claustrophobia,
07:24especially when you know what's going to happen.
07:27And as a portrait of teenage life, of adolescent angst,
07:33but also as a portrait of America sleepwalking into the oblivion, into tragedy,
07:39it is incredible.
07:40And it's all kind of there in the title Elephant, because what Gus Van Saint does is address the elephant in the room.
07:48Gun violence, violence in schools, and the way that it is not being addressed, not properly,
07:55not when you have just thoughts and prayers.
07:58And also it works as a parable, a little bit like the elephant and the blind men parable,
08:06where some blind people go in a room with an elephant, touch various parts,
08:12and essentially describe an animal that is completely different.
08:16And it shows to what extent that humanity has this toxic manner of dealing in absolutes,
08:25but also believing to have absolute truth from very subjective points of view,
08:31from very limited points of view.
08:34And I think this film does it in such a beautiful way,
08:38and in such a scarring way.
08:40And it is, for me, not only the best film to win the Palme d'Or in the last 25 years,
08:44but certainly the most haunting film to do so.
08:47Yeah, and one which is, again, fun perhaps is not the right word,
08:51but certainly something which the whole family, I think, should be watching.
08:54I certainly had watched that with my kids, and they were very moved.
08:58And we have a lot of, we spend so much time going through,
09:02making lists like this for our own pleasure.
09:04We can talk about this for all day.
09:06But why is it important, would you say, to remind people that these films are out there,
09:14you know, they're more easily accessible now than perhaps they've ever been before,
09:18in terms of, you know, you can stream, you can download them.
09:21You know, it's really good to look back and remind ourselves of, you know,
09:25just how beautiful cinema is.
09:27Absolutely.
09:28And the thing is, and this isn't a quote by me,
09:31but it's, cinema is an empathy machine.
09:34And it's the closest thing we have to magic, essentially.
09:39It's the closest thing we have to be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes,
09:43to be empathetic, to learn, and to feel, to just feel emotion.
09:51And yeah, and these films, whether it's Elephant,
09:53talking about issues which sadly are still very relevant to this day,
09:58The White Ribbon, talking about history,
10:01maybe its origins of history, and how we can understand even issues that are happening today.
10:06And also, when it comes to something that's a little bit more out there, like Titan,
10:11it is just incredible to feel, to shake,
10:15but also to realise that these films work on different levels.
10:20You can have a body horror film that tells you everything you need to know about unconditional love,
10:25like Juliette de Corneau does so well.
10:27Or you can have Michael Haneke depressing the absolute shit out of you during two hours,
10:33but it absolutely telling you everything you need to know about a certain period in history.
10:38It's these films, I think, say a lot about the time that they were released,
10:43but in some cases speak enormously to the times we live in still now,
10:48and in some cases, very depressingly so.
10:51David, and those films say a lot about us as well.
10:54Thank you for that look back at your personal recommendations
10:57for the Palme d'Or winners for the last 25 years.
11:00Do stay with us on Euronews Culture.
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